Geography
Yesterday afternoon Crew McLoughlin learnt about the pros and cons of deforestation. They were asked to create a speech based on the question: Should deforestation be illegal? Our crew had lots of brilliant ideas and arguments to support both sides of the debate. The highlight of the lesson was when some pupils shared their amazing speeches at the end. These speeches have inspired Crew McLoughlin to think more deeply about our guiding question: Why Should We Help Our Planet Survive?
Over the past couple of weeks, Crew McLoughlin has been buzzing with excitement during their rainforest expedition learning! From exploring the layers of the rainforest to discovering fascinating creatures like poison dart frogs and jaguars, the students have fully immersed themselves in this vibrant topic. They have created gorgeous glossaries and fascinating fact files. Here’s a sneak peak at our working wall to show you a glimpse of our learning.
Crew Rankin continued their geography journey by learning all about deforestation, the causes of this and how this impacts on people, animals and the planet. After looking at an image to really stimulate our learning, we were shocked to see the stark difference between a thriving forest and one that has been effected by deforestation. We then watched a video to help build our background knowledge, making notes of anything we found important. We then came together and created a class anchor chart to bring our learning together. Finally, we used this information to generate our own persuasive arguments as to whether or not we thought deforestation was a good thing. At the end of the lesson, we stood proudly and delivered these arguments to the rest of our crew. Miss Hamill was REALLY impressed with our emotive language and the facts and information we included.
To bring Hook Week to a close, before revealing our guiding question, UKS2 took part in a Virtual Reality experience that immersed them into the rainforest. They got to look at each layer of the rainforest as if walking around it and come face to face with some of the animals that live there including sloths, tarantulas, capuchin monkeys and jaguars. Throughout this experience, the guide was sharing his wide range of knowledge with the children which they were fully engaged with listening to. What a fantastic experience!
UKS2 all came together in the hall to take part in some across-phase learning to kick start Hook Week. We began by spending some time watching a video that allowed us to immerse ourselves into the rainforest, learning about the different animals and layers of the rainforest. Following this, we became rainforest explorers and worked in mini crews of 4, each investigating one of the four layers of the Amazon rainforest. We used information from around the room and took notes that we then shared on our class Padlet (you can see this if you follow the QR code). Finally, we took part in a Kahoot quiz to test our knowledge and see who had learned the most during the session.
UKS2 were very proud to present their learning to their adults yesterday afternoon. After giving an introduction explaining all about our expedition titled: At The Coalface, the children explained what we had done during our case studies to answer our guiding question: How has the mining industry shaped communities?
Children then got to share their amazing final product – a lapbook that brought all of their hard work from this term together whilst showing off their fantastic artwork. Adults were able to take part in a gallery walk to view their child’s work and were also able to take part in other activites – looking through expedition books, taking part in a Kahoot quiz to test their mining knowledge and an opportunity to create some charcoal art of their own!
Thank you so much to everyone who attended and made it a lovely afternoon!
This week we continued our geography case study by exploring the reasons why humans use water. We learned that water is used for drinking, agriculture, leisure, transportation, making electricity and as habitats for animals and plants. As well as exploring the uses of water, we also learned about the impact this can have on the environment. In some cases this can be positive, however, in others it can be negative.
To depend our understanding of tectonic plates and their movement, we used crackers and whipped cream to represent the tectonic plates and molten lava. We had the opportunity to move the plates so that when they moved away from each other the lave (cream) was able to seep through. This is what would happen with a volcano. We then rubbed the plates (crackers) together which represents what happens during an earthquake. Finally, we used the cracker and rice cake to show what happens when 2 plates push together. This is when mountains would be formed.
Today, Crew Hamill began their first lesson for Case Study 2 – Geography. We became geographers by looking in detail at maps, identifying what they are, why they are used and what they help with. We also looked in detail at the different symbols that can be found on a map and what they mean. We worked in pairs to match up the symbols to their meaning. Once we had more of an understanding on this, we worked in pairs to identify the symbols on a map of our local area, identifying schools, buildings, dual carriageways, water, railways and more.
